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The American painter Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Russia, in the Pale of Settlement. Before becoming one of America’s best-known abstract expressionists, he attended Yale University. Rothko grew up speaking Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew; he was Markus Rotkovich when he attended Jewish school, learning Talmud. When his Orthodox family moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1913, the young Rothko was still engaged in Jewish communal life. As his artistic career flourished, Rothko drifted from Judaism, although some art critics still discern strong Jewish elements in his work.